Modern man: doubly deracinated

Modern man is thoroughly marooned, and Christ is the only lifeline that can help him find a way back on to the ship.

Because man needs roots, many revolutionaries [Voltaire, Hitler, to name two] have attempted to make a shortcircuit back to a forgotten pagan age, despising the Christian legacy of which they themselves were a product. It is also the commonplace of much new age thinking.

But C.S. Lewis has an neat answer for those who think that Europe can come out of Christianity " 'by the same door as in she went' and find herself back where she was. It is not what happens. A post-Christian man is not a Pagan; you might as well think that a married woman recovers her virginity by divorce. The post-Christian is cut off from the Christian past and therefore doubly from the Pagan past." - in De Descriptione Temporum, a lecture delivered on 29th November 1954. CUP, 1955.